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• Helga's Quest ™
• VIRquest

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Average rating: EXCELLENT.  

Apricot or apricot blend Shrub.
Registration name: VIRquest
Exhibition name: Helga's Quest ™

Bred by M.S. Viraraghavan (India, before 2014).
Introduced in Italy by S'Orrosa in 2015 as 'Helga's Quest'.

Hybrid Gigantea, Shrub.  

Pink and yellow, apricot highlights, copper highlights.  Saffron highlights.  Mild fragrance.  Average diameter 4.5".  Large, full (26-40 petals), borne mostly solitary, in small clusters bloom form.  Blooms in flushes throughout the season.  

Upright.  Large, semi-glossy, bronze-green foliage.  

Height: up to 5' (up to 150cm).  

A shrub to pillar rose in an eye-catching medley of pink, gold and apricot, colors never seen before in a hybrid gigantea. The flowers of exquisite Hybrid Tea form open to enormous orbs of stunning colors. The giant foliage forms an admirable contrast.
Mrs Helga Brichet, a most well known name in the rose world, past President of WFRS, who has been in the forefront of conservation of old roses, and bringing to the West the ancient roses of Asia, has been a true friend. Indeed, while Viru’s rose breeding work has been known in India from the beginning - 1960’s onwards - the rest of the rose world learnt about his work only after Helga, as President WFRS visited India for a regional world convention ( in Jaipur, Rajasthan State) in 2000 , and heard Viru lecture about his hybridizing work with R.gigantea and R.clinophylla. After his speech, she came up and told him ’No one in the West knows about this pioneering work that you are doing. You must be invited to speak at a world rose convention’ And she ensured that he was invited to the Houston Texas World Rose Convention , that very year- 2000. So we could say that it was Helga who launched Viru on the world rose stage, and we are eternally grateful to her. She has been a constant and good friend, and we had been waiting to get a rose which we felt would do her justice. She already has a rose named for her, so when we tried out this seedling codenamed VIRQUEST, and liked its overall performance, we showed her photographs of the rose. She liked it and agreed to have it named for her. It is one of our favorite shrubs, growing straight and tall with confident poise ( just like Helga) and the flowers can be cream, light pink, or clear saffron, depending on the weather, but always with a glowing center of saffron. We were indeed most delighted to name it’ Helga’s Quest’ for our very dear friend.
In India, this rose is called ‘Vishnupriya’, which is another name for the goddess Lakshmi ( the goddess of wealth) and the consort of Vishnu ( the world literally translates as ‘Vishnu’s beloved’). There is a legend, from times immemorial,which relates that the two Gods, Brahma, the Creator, and Vishnu, the Protector, contended about the flower that was the most beautiful. Brahma favored the lotus and Vishnu the rose. But upon being shown the arbor laden with fragrant roses in Vishnu’s celestial garden (in the Himalayas), Brahma conceded supremacy to the rose over all other flowers, including the lotus. We felt therefore that it would be fitting to show our appreciation for such a lover of roses.

Source: Breeder